Sunday, May 20, 2012

Writers4Higher features Malcolm R. Campbell

Welcome to Writers4Higher

The purpose of the Writers4Higher blog: to feature authors in a new light, a fresh look at the way writers use their talents and life energies to uplift humankind. Writers4Higher doesn’t promote religious or political views.

1. Tell me about yourself. Your book(s), your life, your inspiration.2. Where do you see your writing taking you in the future?3. How do you use your talents/time to help others?

This issue, Writers4Higher features

Malcolm R. Campbell.

Hi Malcolm. Welcome to the Writers4Higher family.

1.Tell me about yourself. Your book(s), your life, your
inspiration.

My contemporary fantasies are
linked to wilderness settings because nature inspires me and lends itself very
well to magic or to the possibility of magic. I grew up in the Florida Panhandle
where I was a member of a Tallahassee Scout Troop that spent many weekends
camping at nearby lakes, sinkholes and rivers. This was my first major exposure
to the out of doors and it has helped me find connections between my characters
and the places where they live. Most of my career has been focused on technical
writing, but I always had a manuscript hidden away in a sock drawer. The
mega-corporation I was working for laid off our entire division after 9/11. It
was quite a blow, but it did change my focus from describing software to telling
stories set in places like Glacier National Park, Tate’s Hell Swamp, and the
Missouri River.

2.Where do you see your writing taking you in the
future?

After Sarabande was
released last summer, I wasn’t ready for another long project, so I shifted over
to writing short stories. First, it’s good practice, especially when a contest
or magazine has strict word-count limits. I’ve been enjoying writing within
500-word and 1,000-word arenas. I love folktales and stories with a
folktale-like approach. I’m tempted to head off in that direction. The short
stories, whether they ever find a market or not, are allowing me to experiment
with a lot of characters, settings and themes that connect magic, personal
transcendence, and nature into adventures that could easily happen to anyone,
anywhere. I’ve been having fun discovering what it’s like to set a story in my
old Tallahassee neighborhood, another on a Florida highway between Tate’s Hell
and the Garden of Eden, and another that features a Florida Panther and a
Limpkin as its main characters.

3.How do you use your talents/time to help
others?

I review about forty books a year
on several weblogs with a strong focus on small-press books. This comes under
the heading of a “labor of love” because I’m never without a novel on my
nightstand anyway, so why not share a little something about the plot and themes
with others? While I can’t compete with Publishers Weekly, Kirkus
or The New York Times, most small press books never make it to those
places. So, I hope the exposure on my blog, Amazon and GoodReads helps. The act
of writing walls us off from each other and because it does, I think those of us
who don’t have a big publicity machine behind our books can support each other
in part by doing book reviews, using Twitter to spread the word about each
other’s posts, and from time to time using our blogs and Facebook accounts to
discuss writing tips which have worked well for us. It saddens me to see so many
talented authors having to fight so hard for support and exposure; sharing the
treasures sitting on my bookshelf with prospective readers is important to me as
a fellow writer. And, it gives me a real good excuse to keep my nose in a
book!

Thanks for inviting me to stop by
your blog, Rhett. Now, if only there were a way to have a huge plate of piping
hot cathead biscuits while I’m here.